New World Stoneworks

Here at Babson a lot of the teaching is through cases, short texts providing information about some aspect of a real business. The learning takes place through class discussion around the case.

Last week one of our cases was a business plan for a company called "New World Stoneworks", and the class task was to explore what questions the founder would get from potential investors. It's a pretty interesting company that fundamentally changes the economics of using stone in building, while at the same time offering an extremely environmentally friendly product. I enjoyed reading it and the discusion that followed.

Today we had a second case on the same company, this time on the detailed financial projections that went with the business plan. Again, we were examining them from the position of a potential investor. Now financials can be a little dry but we had a fairly interesting discussion for about an hour. Then, to spice things up the founder of the company came in to tell us about what actually happened! It turns out that the tutor for this course had made an angel investment in the business and had invited him along! Here you see him taking questions next to a small section of wall he built on the desk!

To me that sums up what I am enjoying most about this course. Everyone teaching us has real world experience in bucket loads. Every example we work on relates to a real business, and after we've finished dissecting it we can usually find out what actually happened to the company. Although there's a lot of content and some of it is quite academic or technical, this is an entirely practical course.

I must remember to get an early night tonight too - I stayed up late reading some coursework last night so it's only Monday and I'm alrady behind on sleep for the week! It's starting to feel like an awfully long time since I saw MrsCyclops now too. I'm not exactly pining as I have plenty to keep me busy, but I am missing her terribly at the same time. It's hard to articulate.

Unfortunately I now have to go and get through a big pile of reading for tomorrow... Must remember to sleep...